Employer Branding, Meet Content Marketing - Glassdoor for Employers
Employer Branding, Meet Content Marketing

Employer Branding, Meet Content Marketing

Glassdoor's own Alicia Garibaldi joined Salesforce's Marketing Cloudcast this week to discuss how employers can use content marketing to attract top talent. The associate director of B2B Marketing shared key details and strategies, and her unique approach to using content for recruiting with hosts Heike Young and Joel Book. You can listen to the full episode here.

Here are Heike's four takeaways from the episode on how to use content marketing to improve your hiring process:

1.) Know the importance of employer branding

Websites like Glassdoor encourage employees to review their companies. Securing and keeping top talent is a top priority for most companies, and we've seen an explosion in the number of free perks (like unlimited vacation days, free lunch, and ample parental leave) that businesses offer to retain employees.

This has ushered in an era of employer branding, where companies not only want to increase positive brand affinity with buyers, but they also want to build a reputation as a top employer.

Alicia and her team created Employer Branding For Dummies to help brands learn more about cultivating an employer brand. This resource is part of Glassdoor's own content marketing strategy. "All the content I create is about how to promote your brand to the job seeker, how to find the right candidate, and how to get your job in front of them before any of your competitors do," Alicia says.

2.) Create templates to help your audience do their jobs better

Hiring the right people who fit the culture of your company is one of a leader's most important jobs. When it comes to creating content that will help companies attract and find the right candidate quickly, Alicia says, "I'm always thinking: What are quick templates I can give our audience so that they can do this job easier and quicker?"

"Our interview templates have done extremely well. For example, what are all the things you need to know about the interview process and how do you train that across your organization, at scale, so that your interview process runs smoothly and you get people in the door faster?"

For your own employer branding efforts, consider a similar approach of creating templates, toolkits, sample presentations, and checklists that potential employees will first benefit from, and then appreciate so much that they may consider joining your company.

3.) Use content to bring events to life

As a marketer, content bleeds into everything you do, whether you're a true-blue content marketer or work in product marketing, email marketing, social media, or a different area. Content marketing is now all about lifting content right off the page and turning it into experiences.

"At Glassdoor, we have really adapted to a content-first approach for every program that we do. When we launched our Talent Analytics For Dummies book last year, we brought together talent analytics experts for an in-person event where the book would also be available. It was really a content first approach to our event strategy," says Alicia.

"Content marketing has really expanded beyond a blog or an e-book. It's how you bring events to life."

4.) Be clear and transparent about what it's like to work at your company

Telling your company's story is a big part of employer branding. "As a marketer, if you're not challenging yourself and doing different things, you're not doing enough. We're constantly thinking: What else can we do to tell our story in a different way?" shares Alicia.

When it comes to hiring talent, Alicia encourages employers to "be clear as an organization on what your culture is, what your team needs. Getting aligned on all of those things and having those conversations before you embark on the interview process makes everyone more efficient." Then you can use that information to inform the content that you create to target potential new hires.

Do you want someone who really fits the bill for that job description and your company's culture? Or do you say your company is flexible and parent-friendly, yet you won't let employees work from home once in a while or get promoted before they go on paternity leave? It's a big job, but you have to figure out the true values of your company before any content-plus-employer-branding strategy will truly work.